I Want To Stay With You
by Shadsie
Summary: "You were so badly hurt… and your wings were so damaged… that I had to make a decision. It was a 'life or limb' decision. I was able to heal you to save your life, but your wings… I couldn't fully heal them. I'm so sorry, Pit." Palutena is forced to give young Pit a dreadful choice.


_**Disclaimer and Notes:**__ Kid Icarus and its characters belong to Nintendo and, to a lesser extent, Ancient Greece. So far, I have played Uprising through and have only recently downloaded the original game to enjoy its old school glory (I'm still in the first levels... Stop falling, Pit!) From what research I've done into the series mythos; there doesn't seem to be any canon-given reason why Pit cannot fly. I've read a few fanfics dealing with it. Here's my take. Also includes inspiration from the "Medusa's Revenge" video and entries on a certain website's Wild Mass Guessing._

* * *

**I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU **

Palutena chewed a fingernail as she viewed the world below through her scrying-pool. Her army was battling the shadows in one of the greater cities of the humans. The rivalry she had with Medusa was escalating out of control. Medusa had taken to wreaking havoc over the world of the living, destroying its people at random, in part because she saw them as toys and in part because it caused Palutena distress. The Goddess of Light knew that it would not be long before the Goddess of Darkness grew overly ambitious and tried to take Skyworld, itself.

Her dear angels were fighting hard and she was losing many of them. The souls of Palutena's centurions returned to Skyworld. She had created individuals belonging to that class of soldiers, body and heart. She could revive them at will, once she mustered up her power to do so. She'd sent some of her men back into the fray immediately, but several souls were now lingering around her temple, disembodied and forlorn as she was losing the strength to keep up with the casualties.

Some members of her "special breed" were down there confronting Medusa in the rubble and the city streets. As much as Medusa slithered her way onto her domain, Palutena was not blameless. She'd been intruding – be it ever so lightly – upon the domain of the Underworld. Her crime was theft, and she was unrepentant.

Gods grew lonely. Mortals – beasts and men – were short-lived. They had their time in the Light and were slated for their time in the Darkness. The gods could inspire mortal beings and enjoyed their rituals of worship (Palutena found some of the ceremonies done in her honor quite cute), but they never could form any meaningful companionship with something not as "real" as they were. Something as short-lived as a human being was but a whisper of smoke to a god, or at least, to a god who thought a lot about such things as Time.

The gods hardly got along with each other… even family relationships between them tended to turn into power struggles. Palutena found her army lacking in certain aspects. The centurions she'd created were rather "straight" in their thinking, devoted to her in the way clockworks are devoted to their watchmaker. They had some "heart," but not enough to ease her isolation, and she knew they served her because she had directly created them – theirs was a "faith" unquestioned, which was hardly a faith at all. There was no full free will in them.

So, Palutena had started snatching human souls for her use. When a human died who had done something in life (or with the manner of their death) to grab her attention, she'd take their soul before it made its journey to the Underworld. There were very few souls she did this to. Humans were shaped by their hard lives. A sense of will had evolved in them. The Goddess of Nature, Viridi, complained often that they were creatures that had gone "off their path," but their eccentricity was precisely why Palutena found them endlessly fascinating. Their passions and desires made them unlike gods and beasts – perhaps more like the gods, but in a way that allowed them to choose both beauty and sin with consequences that mattered to short lives.

The Goddess of Light had been giving reincarnation to human souls as angels.

They were a different species than her centurions – related, but different. Instead of wings located in the head, the wings were located close to the shoulder-blades on the back. When they hatched, dripping, from their fetal cocoons, they looked just like human children. The wings would grow in within a day in a dramatic fashion. It did not matter how old a human was when his or her soul was liberated from their mortal existence, they were always children before Palutena. They never remembered who they were or what their lives were like before being born on Skyworld, just as proper reincarnations were supposed to go, but Palutena knew that they sometimes dreamed of their former lives when in deep sleep. This breed of angel carried all of the traits that Palutena was looking for in companions: passion, heart, the ability to carry a conversation beyond mere orders and of course, freedom of will.

This meant that there were a few angels she'd re-birthed who'd left her to explore the open skies and to follow their own paths. Most, however, stayed and fought for her. There was a single drawback to their chosen loyalty: Unlike the centurions, when they died, it was a permanent condition. Palutena had not the power to spare to reincarnate them a second time. She, perhaps, could spare such ability for a single angel, but, as it was, the souls of slain angels of the Free Breed gravitated toward the Underworld, just as they were meant to when they had been human.

The very young ones, the new hatchlings, were kept out of the battle below. They huddled in Skyworld's houses and training barracks, kept entertained by a few of the Strongarms who'd stayed behind on babysitting duty (and took it very seriously). The free angels were quite strong compared to their centurion comrades. They did not fall nearly as easily, but Palutena stood before her vision-pool weeping silently. The losses were devastating.

The humans in the city had it even worse. Most of them had fled by now and those that could not flee the doomed town were huddled inside homes and cellars and the town's Light Temple. The streets were littered with statues. Many of them were broken (the souls of those poor people could not come back, even if the stone was returned to flesh). One of the most haunting images was a statue of a rearing horse, complete with a gape-eyed terrified rider. Of course, there were the stone angels outside the city's temple – those that had been carved by human hands as a tribute and those that had once been actual angels.

There were also bodies of flesh and bone littering the streets. Blood painted the sides of buildings where Medusa's colossal footsteps had crushed the "insects" that had been in the way. Her minions, of course, dealt magical beams and blows as well as physical ones. Whipping swords and slashing claws had taken their toll on centurions and "frees" alike as well as any brave humans that had tried to fight.

Palutena pounded her fist into the side of the pool when she saw, lying in the street at random, a slightly blood-specked white wing. It was just the wing there. Its owner had been one of her men she'd just felt die, his soul out of her reach.

Ah, but her army was actually dealing quite a bit of damage in its own right. Liberated serpent scales glittered on the ground. Medusa was oozing a great deal of black shadow-blood, dripping to mingle with the red streaks in the dirt.

"I can lend you just a little bit more of my strength," Palutena said to the images in the pool. "Take this power and finish it!"

Arrows and beams of light pummeled into the Goddess of Darkness from the weapons of the Skyworld Army. She hissed and recoiled, but was not quite finished. She shot out a hand, sweeping away the left flank of angelic troops with her talon-tipped fingers.

That is when the most unexpected thing happened.

A bright white little figure (a very little figure), zipped out from the middle of the soldiers' formation, firing tiny arrows aimed for the eyes of Medusa's hair-snakes. They landed home, blinding several of them. The tiny warrior went straight for Medusa's own face, screaming "For Lady Palutena!"

Palutena's heart leapt into her throat. That was one of her hatchlings – a young soldier still in training. He wasn't supposed to be down there! He was still a little child! How did he find his way down with the army? She concentrated on the scrying-pool and sensed for him. Yes, she'd only rescued him within the last year. Angels did grow up fast, but he was still quite small. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised her… this insane bravery. As a human, his soul had done something particularly intriguing to grab her attention and her blessing.

Mostly, she'd reincarnated him into her service because she'd thought he'd gotten a raw deal, rotten luck. His was an ambitious soul, killed by drowning after flying too close to the sun on wings made from wax. The boy may not have had his mortal memories, but his audacity had certainly carried over to the new life, even after she'd given him a name that was supposed to keep him humble.

Some of Palutena's creations had layered names – the name of the tiny warrior was one of those. The name served to remind him, even without memories, that he'd fallen. It was to remind him that he'd been brought out of despair. It was also a name that denoted a seed that would grow into a mighty tree in time. I also meant "to be matched in battle."

"Oh, Pit," the goddess sighed.

Oh, but could he fight! Medusa seemed to be as surprised as the gawking Skyworld Army at the ambitious little angel. He was actually landing wounds on her that other, stronger and more experienced soldiers had failed to make.

She snorted as one of his arrows went up her nose. Apparently, that was when she'd lost her patience.

"Worthless little brat!" she snarled as she'd caught little Pit. She'd been curiously careful to hook one of her fingernails beneath his clothes and belt. She held him close to her face as he struggled. She swatted the standard-issue light-bow out of his hands as he tried to load another arrow, sending it to shatter upon the ground.

The young angel dangled on her talon for several breathless seconds. "Nice try," she mocked. "It is interesting to see that Palutena sends children after me now. It must be heartbreaking to serve a so-called goddess who won't do anything for herself!"

"You shut up!" Pit screamed. "She is with us! Lady Palutena is with us!"

"Oh, is she now?" Medusa said causally as she lifted her other hand. She carefully traced the tip of a razor-sharp fingernail over the boy's cheek and then, in two swift, decisive motions, sliced it down into each of his wings. The claw sliced neat lines of red just below the arches and a glowing magical energy that arched off the nail flowed into and through the wounds. She finished the move by stabbing the child through the stomach with the same claw and flicking him down into the street as if she was ridding herself of a speck of detritus she'd plucked from her nose.

The remaining warriors of the Skyworld Army were furious. They rose up a collective roar and came upon Medusa with full force. They displayed a vigor that even Palutena did not know they were capable of. Wounded and oozing from many arrows, magic projectiles and wounds made by lances and blades, Medusa tired and decided to retreat for the time being. The shadows hissed off as the Light triumphed. Palutena made ready to recall her troops, herself exhausted from lending them her power. She could feel some of the wounds her men had taken, although they did not manifest themselves on her body.

She also felt, to her surprise, the life-force of Pit still hanging on. It was weak, but she was leaving no man behind. She saw him in an alley, a messy ball of blood and feathers, trying to pick himself up. The goddess communicated to one of the Strongarm centurions his location. Clarence picked the boy up gently. Good ol' Clarence. He was one of Palutena's most reliable soldiers, even if he stared at her blankly whenever she tried to discuss philosophy with him.

The living and the barely-living returned on a beam of light in the courtyard of Palutena's temple. She picked up her dress and ran out to meet them. The healthy saw to the wounded and the goddess, exhausted as she was from lending the army her strength, conjured health-restoring items and foods. These would take care of hunger and tiredness, if not the heavy wounds.

The two co-commanders of her guard stepped out before her, Tabris and Hyohko. They were free-breed angels, although Hyohko had grayish wings. "The threat is neutralized for the time being, Great Lady," they said at once, bowing at the waist. They began recounting casualties.

"It's the worst attack we've seen so far," Palutena sighed.

"No kidding," said Hyohko. "We carried up some of us that I don't think a simple meal and a soak in the hot springs are going to help."

Tabris nodded to the line of centurions. "Clarence, bring out the bravest of us," he ordered.

Clarence lumbered over, cradling the broken form of Pit in his enormous hands. Pit squirmed and winced. He flapped his wings weakly, as if he was testing them to see if they still worked, sending rivulets of blood down the long feathers.

"Lady Palutena," he said almost in a whisper, smiling as soon as he saw her face.

She gathered him into her arms, knelt down and placed him on the ground, letting him lean on her. The wound in his middle was pretty serious, as well as injuries he'd taken upon being flung to the street but she chose to examine his wings first. She stroked them ever so gently and then she held them out, stretching the muscles, causing Pit to cry out in pain and bite his lip.

"Lady Palutena, why do you look so sad?" Pit asked. "You can fix me, right? They're just wounds…you can fix anything…"

He swayed and she hugged him. She lifted his chin and forced him to look her in the face so that he might take her words seriously. "I… I'm going to give you a choice, Pit," she said solemnly. "You've been hurt really bad… too bad for me to fix all the way. You can do one of two things, okay?"

"Yeah…" the little angel said, shivering.

"I can fix your wings and allow you to take one last flight. You will be able to fly freely on your own, but, if I heal your wings, your body will still be wounded. You'll have one last beautiful flight… but it will be your last. You will fall and I will not be able to bring your soul back to me."

"But I'll fly, right?"

"Yes," Palutena answered with a shudder in her breath. "Your other choice is… I can heal your body and you will live. You will stay here, with us, as yourself – but you will not be able to fly anymore. You'll live, but you'll be…"

"I want to stay with you!" Pit cried, hugging in closer to his goddess.

Palutena smiled. She had given him a choice, but was hoping that he'd make this decision. Her heart was already broken from the battle's losses. She did not want to lose one of her youngest hatchlings, particularly one who had so much courage. She gently wrapped her hands around Pit's middle. She willed energy into him, mending the worst of the damage. He would need to rest to fully heal, but now he would not die.

"Thanks," Pit sighed as his eyelids fluttered and he lost consciousness.

Palutena picked him up and stood. "I will be taking him to my temple," she announced. She nodded to her commanders. "Make sure everyone takes care of themselves," she ordered, "and bring me some soft blankets."

* * *

Palutena laid Pit down on a couch within her temple, atop many soft blankets. She cleaned him up and let him sleep and she quieted him out of bad dreams, using her power to give him dreams that were sweet. He slept for days and in that time, Palutena tried to figure out a way to heal his wings. Medusa had destroyed and scarred key muscles, both physically and magically. She rested and concentrated and still was unable to fully reverse the damage.

She tried not to let any of her other servants see her weep. She did not want to lose face before her men, nor to look like she was giving an overage of concern to just one little trainee over her seasoned soldiers. For a moment, she'd regretted giving Pit a choice. Perhaps it would have been more merciful to give him one last beautiful flight. His decision was that of a scared child. It looked like he was going to stay with her – grounded on Skyworld. The goddess had wanted steady companionship, but not like this.

She began experimenting on the sleeping boy. One morning, she lifted a single feather from one of his healing wings. She imbued it with light-power and let it flit about the open air of her inner sanctum. Smiling, she began flexing Pit's wings with this energy, with him gently snoring and none the wiser. She immediately stopped this when she saw the feather that was floating around the room catch fire and vanish in a puff of smoke.

So, there was a bit of a limit here. It was not her fault. Non-divine creatures could not handle the power of gods for very long – especially a power as pure as hers. She'd have to measure this and time it.

She plucked more feathers (and smoothed out the vacant spaces with a comb-over). Palutena made them dance about the open air and sweep it in various formations.

"Five minutes," she calculated to herself. "Hmmm… let's see how this works on a whole wing…"

She could sense that Pit was dreaming about flying. That was good. Perhaps it would aid her. She concentrated upon both of his wings, waving her divine staff. The child lifted up into the air above his bed, still sound asleep. She let him dangle there, moved him around slightly, and then gently placed him back down on his blankets.

"I suppose further study should wait until he's awake," the goddess said. Pit fidgeted and twitched his wings. She placed a blanket over him and kissed his forehead. "I don't want to ever let you fall again," she whispered, "no matter how close you fly to my Light."

The next day, with Commander Tabris present in the temple, Pit awoke.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Palutena teased.

"Lady Palutena?" Pit asked, "What am I doing here?"

"You fell in battle and Lady Palutena has been taking care of you," Tabris answered.

"Is there anything you need, Pit?" Palutena asked.

The boy's face turned red and he bit his lip, like he did not want to answer. Palutena laughed. "Tabris, will you be a dear and take him to the latrines?"

"Yes, my Lady," Tabris said with a bow. The older angel helped Pit out of his bed. The child staggered, uneasy on his feet after so much time spent off of them.

"And to the hot spring!" Palutena called after them. "There's nothing like a morning bath!"

* * *

After he'd had his needs taken care of and was fed, Pit seemed none the worse for wear. Palutena laughed for joy seeing the tiny boy run around the greater island of Skyworld. An elder angel named Monica had taken to watching him and Hyohko stood by, even as he was engaged in monitoring centurions in their drill-exercises. Palutena watched from her garden at a distance when the unthinkable happened.

"No, Pit!" Monica cried as the boy ran right up to one of the edges of the island and jumped right off. Pit immediately plummeted. Clarence, the Strongarm that had carried him home from battle, immediately broke from formation and dove down after him. Luckily, the muscle-bound old soldier caught the errant child and brought him back safely.

Immediately, Pit came running for Palutena, all kinds of upset. His little face was a mask of pure confusion and horror. "Lady Palutena! Lady Palutena!" he called, "I can't fly! Why can't I fly? I opened up my wings, but they aren't working! What's wrong with me? Can you fix them?"

Palutena closed her eyes and sighed. She knelt down and stroked one of Pit's wings gently with her fingertips. "You really don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?"

"Do you remember being in a battle, Pit?"

"Kind of… Everyone was fighting Medusa in some town… I wasn't supposed to go, but I went because I thought it was right. There was a lot of yelling and there were a lot of monsters and I defeated some and…"

"Do you remember what happened to you in that battle? Do you remember being hurt?"

The angel shook his head. "We won, didn't we?"

"Yes, yes, we won. You were injured very badly, though. That's why you were in my temple. You were asleep for a long time."

"I feel really great now, thanks!"

"Your wings don't hurt at all?"

"Nope. They're as good as ever, but they… they don't work!"

"Pit, I don't know how to tell you this, but…"

"Tell me what, Lady Palutena?"

"You were so badly hurt… and your wings were so damaged… that I had to make a decision. It was a 'life or limb' decision. I was able to heal you to save your life, but your wings… I couldn't fully heal them. I'm so sorry, Pit."

The boy's eyes widened in resolute horror. "What do you mean, Lady Palutena? Does this mean I can't fly?"

The goddess nodded solemnly.

Pit tried to hold back tears, but after a minute, he stood shaking, his body wracked with sobs.

"Pit…sssh…" Palutena soothed. "I've actually thought of a solution to the problem. I can let you borrow some of my power to fly, but it is… limited. I tested it on you when you were asleep. We can do better tests now that you're awake. Do you want to try it?"

Pit nodded and the experiments began.

* * *

Time wore on and it was not long after that fateful battle that Palutena's worry came true. Medusa launched an attack on Skyworld and took it. It was one tiny, flightless angel that came to Palutena's rescue, even without her light in his wings. He battled his way out of the Underworld itself, despite being small and suffering a unique disability. His courage was more than proven.

Pit was promoted to Captain of the Guard. It was not only a reward for his courage, it was a promotion made of sorrow. He defeated Medusa, but not before she'd claimed the lives of every one of his kind. He'd managed to save the centurions, but all those that had been birthed from higher, human souls were slain. Little Pit was the only one left.

When Pit was given his commander's laurels, he remembered Tabris, Hyohko and gentle Monica, who'd cared for him so well. Palutena had stopped taking human souls. It was too heartbreaking losing so many of them. Deciding that she could not bear to lose her last companion, she concentrated some of her energy into Pit. She gave him a small part of her soul, so that she would be able to bring him back from a quick death the same way she did for the centurions. There were some wounds and kinds of death she could not bring him back from. The shadows of these nibbled at the edges of her mind. She could save him from most fatal strikes, however.

There were many years of peace and much time to experiment with giving Pit the gift of flight. Palutena remained unable to heal the scars that kept the boy from being able to fly on his own. For his part, Pit seemed to rather like this partnership, though he was embarrassed by his non-functioning wings.

Every day, his decision echoed in Palutena's mind. "I want to stay with you."

* * *

**END. **

_All of the named original-character angels were named after angelic characters in other fictions. See if you can pick out my references. _

_For fans of my Legend of Zelda work… I do plan to get back to writing "The Greater Desert." I'm slightly writer's blocked on it currently. Even though it is a remake and I know where I want to go with it, the problem with remaking a long fic like that is figuring out ways to make things special and new so that it's more than just a re-hash. Until then, it looks like I'm getting the KI ideas out of my system. _


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